Testimony of affair detailed in murder trial

SOMERSET — John Dawson had an affair with a married woman that began six weeks before his wife’s death, according to a deposition he provided to a car insurance company on Oct. 26, 1982.

Dawson is on trial for the murder of his wife, Kathleen Dawson, on Nov. 10, 1981. Kathleen Dawson, 30, was struck in the head with a blackjack and burned beyond recognition in her car along what is now Soap Hollow Road in Conemaugh Township. A nurse’s aide, Kathleen Dawson left Windber Hospital after her normal 3 to 11 p.m. shift on Nov. 9 and was driving home off Somerset Pike near Boswell.

The car she was discovered in, a 1980 Plymouth Horizon, was destroyed in the fire. The 1982 deposition had to do with paying insurance on that vehicle.

In the sixth day of John Dawson’s trial for the murder of his wife, the deposition was read into evidence before the jury by Somerset County Detective Jason Hunter.

John Dawson testified in the deposition that he believed his wife did not know of the affair and connected his being out late at night with drinking.

“Most of the time I was out late, she (Kathleen Dawson) was in bed at home,” he said.

Dawson discussed his affair with Rose Sayler of Stoystown, who is now deceased. He said he saw Sayler regularly over the six weeks prior to his wife’s death.

He’d visit her regularly at the tavern where she worked, he said. He called the relationship with Sayler “a sexual affair” while his wife was alive.

Dawson said that before his wife died, he did not tell Sayler that he loved her. That changed after Kathleen Dawson’s death, he indicated. Sayler accompanied John Dawson to Florida in February 1982, according to court documents. She returned to testify at a coroner’s inquest about eight months after Kathleen Dawson’s death.

John Dawson said that his wife was never suspicious or jealous and that she “trusted me too far.” Kathleen Dawson did, however, have “a phobia about drinking,” he said.

When he was asked by an attorney at the deposition if he had problems in his marriage, he answered, “Me drinking and running around — she didn’t know about my running around.”

During the 10 years of marriage with Kathleen Dawson they never separated, he said, but they did have trouble over his drinking.

He said he was with Sayler on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 8. But he was not with her on Monday, Nov. 9, because Sayler stayed at home with her husband during Monday Night Football.

On the morning of Kathleen Dawson’s death, Sayler called him at 6:30 a.m., as she often did to wake him up on the days his wife worked night shift. On Nov. 10 he told her his wife had died, he testified in the deposition.